Page 221 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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but their potential congruence with any one citizen’s selection criteria is
low. Downs writes that “the selection principles embodied in the data
[provided by mass media] may differ from those of the decision-maker in
19
such a way that he may be led into wrong decisions.” Citizens are aware
ofthisproblem.Facedwithchoicesamongacomparativelysmallnumber
of print and broadcast information channels, they recognize that the
editorial policies and journalism practices that produce the information
from those channels are not likely to comport well across many issues
and choices. Even if one assumes that media exhibit a perfectly rational
Hotelling effect and shift toward the median viewpoint, the multiplicity
of issues and the distribution of citizens around the statistical median
imply that no citizen may find information from the media to be reliably
congruent with his or her own selection criteria on any particular issue.
Downsarguesthatthemostwidespreadandsystematicfailureofselection
congruence between members of the public and the mass media takes
placealongclasslines.Citizensatthelowerendofthesocioeconomicscale
are likely to perceive a systematic incongruence between their interests
and the mass media, which are owned and operated by those at the upper
end of the socioeconomic scale. Downs writes that in general, “[T]he cost
ofinformationactsineffecttodisenfranchiselow-incomegroupsrelative
to high-income groups when voting is costly.” 20
Although Downs’s articulation of the problem of information selec-
tion in mass media predates the rise of television as a major force in
American politics, the theory provides a plausible explanation for why
citizen knowledge and participation rates did not rise as broadcast me-
dia apparently increased the flow of information to citizens in the 1960s
and 1970s. That is, broadcast television provided information from a
limited number of sources that gave citizens little control over selection.
To the extent that citizens perceived television as a poor delegate for
selecting personally congruent political information, this technological
development did little to lower the real costs of information for citizens,
despite the fact that the marginal cost of political information available
on television is virtually zero.
Contemporary information technology may be different. Clearly, new
information technology differs in important ways from traditional print
andbroadcastmassmedia.Itoffersavastlygreatervolumeofinformation
than other media, often at comparably low or lower marginal costs, from
a virtually limitless number of competing sources. More important, it

19 20
Ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. 261.
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